Helm's music, love for community live on

Listen to what the stars who knew and loved him said about Woodstock's Levon Helm backstage at October's Love for Levon concert:

Steve Israel

Listen to what the stars who knew and loved him said about Woodstock's Levon Helm backstage at October's Love for Levon concert:

"He showed the way to do it with class, with grace, with integrity," said Joe Walsh, talking about the singer and drummer of The Band who died a year ago today.

"He was really generous to us when we were trying to break in," said Jakob Dylan.

He had "a smile that seeped from his mouth on through to his body," said Mike Gordon of Phish.

Notice that these terrific musicians didn't mention Helm's heart-of-the-beat drumming or his amazing ability to "do any form of honest American music with authority," as Helm's bandleader and friend, Larry Campbell, put it.

What really impressed those who knew or even met him wasn't "just" Levon Helm, "the Delta of American music," as Campbell put it.

It was Levon Helm, the man. He would do just about anything for the Ulster County community he called home since the '60s. Just as his pocket-perfect drumming and salt-of-the earth singing evoked the heart of a tune like "The Weight" or "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down," Levon was the heart of the Woodstock-area community.

He might have had his own financial troubles, but he'd always play benefits for needy schoolchildren and struggling farmers.

When the kids at Woodstock Elementary School faced cuts in their arts programs, Helm handed over a check for $10,000 to Woodstock Elementary School Principal Bobbi Schnell.

"I was bowing down to him and he was standing there with the biggest smile, as if we did something for him, and he just did it for us," Schnell recalled a few months ago. "He gave so much of himself, and it was unconditional. He was all about the community."

He also brought his band to the rickety old Onteora High School auditorium to raise some $5,000 for the school's music program, which was hurting so badly that band members had to patch their instruments.

"But that's what he did," farmer John Gill recalled a few months ago. Gill was one of the many "regular guy" pals of Helm, who grew up picking cotton and driving tractors on his father's farm in Turkey Scratch, Ark. He never lost sight of those roots. Those roots were one reason Helm started his Saturday night Midnight Rambles, which were modeled after the traveling carnival shows he saw as a kid and drew musical guests like Elvis Costello, Emmylou Harris and Mumford & Sons to his home/studio.

Even after he died, folks still flocked to the Rambles — not just for the music of Levon's terrific band and their guests, but for the cozy spirit of community that's as real and rugged as the bluestone and wood beams of his home.

"There's nowhere like this," said a 20-something music fan named Mike who drove up from the East Village for a recent Ramble.

Yes, Levon Helm may have died a year ago today. But by giving so much of his self to us, he created something bigger than that self — something as real and lasting as his music.